Nelly Korda’s 10-over opening spherical was just the start.
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LANCASTER, Pa. — The groan arrived on the tee field, confirming the unhealthy information. It was Thursday on the twelfth gap on the U.S. Women’s Open and it’d simply occurred once more: any individual had landed a tee shot within the water.
The man standing to the appropriate of the tee field won’t have heard the groan. Or possibly he did, however by the point 4 p.m. native time rolled across the groans had grown so frequent and so common that their existence didn’t register with him. In both case, he broke decorum from typical guy-at-a-golf-tournament habits and whipped out his telephone to take a name. A buddy was on the opposite line, and our pal had one thing to inform him.
“Dude,” he mentioned, grinning. “I’m here at the U.S. Open, and it’s insane.”
And then a pause.
“The U.S. Women’s Open.”
On Thursday at Lancaster C.C., gamers battled a golf course whose setup would have examined any skilled area. Like all the good U.S. Opens of previous, the wind was whipping, the bottom was calcified, and the scores went skyrocketing. After Thursday, the variety of bogeys-or-worse had greater than tripled the variety of birdies. And after Thursday, the variety of under-par gamers on supposedly the best of the 4 match days sat at simply three.
We knew this week could be exhausting. In Gee Chun won the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster C.C. with a rating of 8 underneath, and for a lot of the week the leaderboard’s high 10 gamers had been the one ones with a rating underneath par. As the week began, participant after participant stepped to the rostrum to share the identical perspective: the golf course was exhausting, it was simple to make errors, it was a traditional U.S. Open check.
But we didn’t know it could be this exhausting. Rose Zhang hitting the inexperienced with an method shot and spinning it 15 yards again into the water-hard. Lexi Thompson needing three chips to land her ball on the tenth green-hard. Nelly Korda placing three within the water and making a ten — a ten!!! — exhausting. By the top of the day, the scoring common at Lancaster had crept north of 5 over par, and the gamers had been equal elements dejected and demoralized.
“I knew it as soon as I walked out of the hotel,” mentioned Andrea Lee, the low participant from the morning wave. “It was gusting pretty good, even in the morning when I thought it was going to be a little bit calmer compared to the afternoon.”
Lee arrived on the course to search out the wind not gusting however outright galing at instances, spewing pollen into the air and all method of golf photographs into unlucky locations.
“I just knew it was going to be a grind out there,” Lee mentioned. “I mean, this golf course is such a test. It’s a beast of a golf course, really, and par’s a really good score out here.”
The worst offender of the wind was the twelfth gap, a devilish frontward-sloping par-3 with a false entrance careening dangerously towards a creek. The gap was taking part in simply 161 yards as we speak on the bottom, nevertheless it performed wherever from 10-20 yards longer into the brunt of the wind. The consequence was an almost unattainable determination for a lot of the finest gamers within the area: hit your longer membership by the wind and threat hitting it into the again bunker, the place a short-sided chip risked (as Korda did after choosing 6-iron and hitting it too far) rolling again into the creek; or hit a shorter membership into the wind with the hopes it wouldn’t get gusted straight into the water.
A backup of “25 or 30 minutes” (Korda’s estimation) existed on the opening all day due to this determination, which plagued gamers on either side of the ledger. But these watching from exterior the ropes didn’t appear to thoughts the delay — they watched all afternoon lengthy with a perverse pleasure on their faces, every successive gaffe serving as additional proof that this yr’s nationwide championship wouldn’t present some cupcake winner.
It helped some that Korda, the week’s head-and-shoulders favourite, plunked three within the water on No. 12 simply moments after the match began. Her 10 to begin the day set the tone for what was going to observe.
“I just didn’t really want to shoot 80, and I just kept making bogeys,” Korda mentioned, minutes after taking pictures 80 to begin the match. “Today was just a bad day.”
Nelly Korda’s disastrous main begin reveals putting flaw in her recreation
Zephyr Melton
In a area of 156 gamers, Korda ended Thursday in a tie for a hundred and fortieth, which is able to absolutely lead somebody to argue that the U.S. Women’s Open shouldn’t be truthful. And in fact, for those who’re a TV accomplice or match organizer, it isn’t truthful. Korda is a generational expertise and one of many true needle-movers in professional golf, and viewers received’t be tuning in by the droves to see if she — and different far-over-par stars like Rose Zhang (+8) and Lexi Thompson (+7) — can struggle their manner again to the cutline.
But in some methods, Korda, Zhang and Thompson’s scores underlined the purpose. If the winner of six of the final seven ladies’s occasions can ship a second able to regarding even the very best handicapper, then Lancaster isn’t discriminating in its issue. And if Lancaster is an equal-opportunity offender, then the U.S. Women’s Open is delivering precisely what we hoped it could.
On Thursday on the U.S. Women’s Open, satisfaction didn’t come within the type of a can’t-miss leaderboard or a hair-raising roar. It got here within the type of a groan.
A pleasant, devilish, superb groan.
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